Erev Yom Hashoah Services and Program with Author Judy Rakowsky (Hybrid)

Yom Hashoah is the day that the Jewish community around the world commemorates the destruction, loss, and resilience that came out of the Holocaust. This year at TBE, we’ll mark Erev Yom Hashoah with a service of memory at 7:00 pm, followed by an opportunity to hear a remarkable story of survival and reunion powerfully told by local reporter and author of The Jews in the Garden: A Holocaust Survivor, the Fate of His Family, and the Secret History of Poland in WWII, Judy Rakowsky, started at 7:30 pm and followed by Q&A. You can watch her book trailer here.

Judy Rakowsky is the author of the critically acclaimed narrative nonfiction book, Jews in the Garden, which the New York Times said, “reads like a thriller” and which was an editor’s choice of the New York Times book review. She spent decades on deadline as an award-winning investigative reporter and editor at the Boston Globe, People Magazine, the Providence Journal, and other outlets. As a young reporter she got to know Cousin Sam, a survivor of the Krakow ghetto and Nazi concentration camps who later raised a family in Ohio. She traveled again and again to Poland with Sam in pursuit of a cousin who survived the massacre of her family in hiding with brave Poles. Describing those discoveries—the true history of what happened to these relatives—was outlawed in 2018 by the Polish government. Coverage of Jews in the Garden can be found in The New York Times, NPR’s Book of the Day, USA Today, Boston Globe Magazine, The Times of Israel, The Providence Journal, and other outlets. She lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband Sam.

Registration: This event is available in person and online. Please click the appropriate purple bar above to register.

Sponsored by the Beth Elohim Institute for Transformation (BEIT), which offers an integrated, multifaceted approach to exploring and applying Jewish teachings and tradition to our contemporary daily lives by bringing together learning, spiritual practice, caring, and action all under one roof.